Socialism has historically been bad for the environment. If you don’t agree with me, keep in mind that we have had over a century of experimentation with every different kind of socialism that you can think of. And what have been the results of these socialist experiments? Widespread environmental destruction, all for the sake of “society’s collective best interest.”
What Was the Philosophy That Led to This Destruction?
There are many countries that, throughout the twentieth century, went all-in on the socialist route. Many of these countries are found in the former Soviet Union, and in Eastern Europe behind what was then known as the Iron Curtain. And what do we find in these countries? Many examples of environmental degradation and destruction, all for the sake of “society’s collective best interest.” In fact, we still see examples of socialism’s role in environmental destruction today in Communist China, Socialist Venezuela, and the nation of Mexico, just south of the United States.
It’s interesting to note that we didn’t know about the terrible environmental impact of the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc countries, until after the whole system collapsed around 1991.
Here’s a question for you: In the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, why do you think that this environmental destruction took place, and on the scale that it did? The answer lies in the size and scale of ownership. You’ll find that when property is owned on a small scale, as in a small community arrangement, as you might find in a neighborhood homeowner’s association, or in a kibbutz community in Israel, the scale is small enough that everyone in the community ends up being a check on each other. On a small community scale like this, everyone in the community can ensure that members of the community are not doing something that would be defined as environmental abuse or destruction.
But, when the size of the property that is owned communally takes place on a very large scale, such as on the scale of an entire nation, things become very problematic. In these large-scale arrangements, the state’s property and resources are seen as a free resource that can and should be used for the benefit of all, since that is the philosophy behind all the different forms of socialism. Because there is no pride of personal ownership, as you might find under a system of property rights as found within a capitalistic framework; and because there is no motivation to make a profit, it means that there’s no motivation to simply maintain that land and its resources. There’s no motivation to take care of that land and property so that it maintains its value, and so that it can be used by future generations. In these socialist societies, people simply look at land and its resources as something to be used now. They have no consideration for the future, or for long-term consequences of their actions.
If you think that we have environmental problems in the capitalist west, it doesn’t even remotely compare to the level of environmental destruction, degradation, and pollution found in the countries behind the Iron Curtain. You can read all about it in a book called Ecocide in the USSR. Later in this article, I’m going to show that environmental calamities are handled much better under a capitalistic framework than under a socialistic framework by comparing similar environmental calamities under both frameworks and how they were handled in each case – stay tuned to learn more about this.
Examples of Environmental Destruction Caused by Socialism
Right now, let’s go back to the twentieth century and talk about several examples of environmental destruction that were caused by socialism. So, let’s begin.
Soviet Union
In the former Soviet Union, around the Black Sea, forests surrounding the sea were cut down to be used for lumber, without any replanting taking place, leading to widespread deforestation around the Black Sea. Massive amounts of sand and gravel were exploited for construction purposes without any regard to how it might affect the environment. And what did this lead to? Massive erosion, and of epic proportions, if you consider that the Black Sea ended up losing half of its coastline.
Do you remember hearing or reading stories about the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio catching fire in 1969? It was that event that was the catalyst for the modern environmental movement here in the United States. If you think that situation was bad, it was much, much worse in the Soviet Union. If you lived in the former Soviet Union, and you happened to travel aboard one of the many passenger ferries that moved people up and down one of their major rivers, you would have seen a sign on the ferry warning you not to throw your cigarette overboard because there was a good chance that you might catch the river on fire.
In fact, the massive amount of pollution in the Soviet Union’s major rivers also led to massive fish kills.
It’s interesting to note that in our United States, where journalists are free to report things, and bring awareness to problems, that the reporting of that incident on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio in 1969 brought awareness to a public issue. On the other hand, journalists in the Soviet Union did not have that freedom, and so the environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and streams were not reported; like I said, it was only after the USSR collapsed that people became aware of these things.
Not only that, but here in the US, because we were made aware of a problem, we worked to start fixing the problem almost immediately; in the Soviet Union, the catastrophe continued unabated for several decades, since Soviet citizens were not made aware of the massive environmental problems they had.
Consider the Aral Sea, on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, part of what was the former Soviet Union. The Aral Sea was in the past the fourth-largest freshwater lake in the world, comparable to the Great Lakes found in North America. But, because of massive irrigation projects in the Soviet Union, with no thought for how they were affecting the environment, the sea shrank in size, so that today it is only about 1/10th of its original size. One part of the Sea has dried up completely, is covered with salt flats, and goes by the name of Aralkum Desert. Many environmentalists consider this to be “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.”
Consider the Volga River. It runs through the heart of eastern Russia, spanning 2,295 miles or 3,694 kilometers, making it the longest river in Europe. It has had waste products dumped into it, or pumped into it, and since this pollution took place over many decades, it adds up to literally billions of cubic meters of heavy metals, pesticides, oil byproducts, and other pollutants, over that decades-long history of pollution. And if you add up all the sunken oil tankers, cargo ships, and passenger ships that are sitting on the bottom of that river, it’s estimated to add up to around 3,000. 3,000! That’s a lot! And they could all be seeping fuel and oil into the river. Anyways, this is just another of the many environmental legacies of socialism.
Now let’s head east to a lake that sits just north of Mongolia, which itself is just north of China. What lake am I talking about? Lake Baikal. For a long period of time, throughout most of the lifespan of the Soviet Union, many decades, this lake was heavily polluted from waste products of a paper mill, including bleaches used for making paper white. Raw alkaline sewage could be seen floating in the middle of the lake. In fact, one time there was a floating island of this raw sewage measured at 18 miles long. And that was besides the terrible stinky smell that came with it. Logging operations nearby led to massive deforestation, leading to dust storms and erosion – no effort was made to replant saplings in areas where trees were downed for lumber and for pulp for making paper.
Eastern Bloc Countries
In Poland, trains were not allowed to run any faster than 40 kph, or 24 MPH, because acid rain was eroding the train tracks. Many people got chronic lung disease because of that acid rain and other forms of air pollution. This problem was most prominent in the Katowice region of Poland, which was heavily industrialized. Life expectancy during this time period was falling for Polish men, all while it was increasing in much of the world – where capitalism was being practiced.
When the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1991, and outsiders were first allowed into Czechoslovakia freely, boy was it a sight to see. Extreme air pollution caused hundreds of thousands of acres of forest to disappear, and the landscape in these parts of the country became denuded of any plant life. In the northern part of the country, the sky had a thick brown haze for most of the year from all of the pollution. You couldn’t drink from the nation’s groundwater, as it was toxic and poisonous from all the pollutants that seeped into it.
It was just as bad, if not worse, in East Germany, where it was estimated in studies from the 1980’s that 1/5th of all trees were dead, and 1/3rd of all lakes were biologically dead. Imagine having to use your car’s headlights in the middle of the day because the air pollution made it hard to see. Imagine being so disgusted by the stench of the air that you puked. All of this was the case in East Germany.
I could go on and on and on about similar stories of pollution found in other socialist countries inside the Eastern Bloc, such as Romania, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia, but I’ll stop there. Anyways, these are just a few of the many, many examples of the extreme pollution that could be found in Eastern Europe where communist-style socialism was practiced.
Communist China
If you go to China today, you will discover the same type of pollution problems that were previously found in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries before its collapse.
It was estimated that by the early 1990’s that more than 90 percent of the pine trees found in Sichuan province forests had died because of the effects of air pollution and acid rain. And this deforestation has continued unabated in many other parts of China, too. In fact, this acid rain and air pollution has led to massive destruction of crops in some parts of the country. Desertification is a factor in northern Chinese plains, where millions of acres of grazing land have been rendered alkaline and unusable.
Yes, China has come a long, long way in allowing for free-market competition, capitalism, and private ownership to take place, which has allowed more than a billion people to rise out of poverty, but because these benefits are done under that banner of state socialism, they still practice the collectivist philosophy that “we can’t let a few people getting hurt stand in the way of general progress for all.” Because of this mentality, China is going down the same path as its predecessor, the former Soviet Union, in terms of allowing for environmental destruction. In fact, according to a 2007 report, 16 of the 20 most-polluted cities in the world were, at the time, located in China.
Socialism in Venezuela
Venezuela is another contemporary example that we have of the detrimental effects of socialism on the environment. At one point a couple of decades ago, Venezuela was the wealthiest nation in Latin America. Then it took a turn for the worst as it decided to go the socialist route. And where did that route take them?
Venezuela is a very rich country when it comes to its abundance of natural resources. Today, much of those natural resources are government-owned. This means that there are no owners practicing private property rights over those resources, the kind of ownership which motivates them to manage their resources well.
Oil resources, and the infrastructure to utilize that oil, has, at some time in the past, all been confiscated, taken over, and nationalized, being put under the government-owned oil enterprise known as PDVSA. This enterprise has a monopoly on all oil infrastructure in the country, including extraction, refining, and delivery services. There are not several private oil firms competing with each other for customers, or being motivated to manage their resources well; because of this, it ends up causing environmental problems that are much worse than you would find under a competitive system with private property rights. For example, there are more than 15,000 sludge pits, waste from oil wells, which are leaking into the ground. If they don’t stop this seeping soon, it could render much of the nation’s groundwater useless, poisonous, and toxic.
Venezuela is losing forest at a much faster rate than that found in the Amazon basin in Brazil. Lake Maracaibo is heavily polluted with toxic chemicals and human sewage. For a long time, sewage was dumped into the lake at a rate of 10,000 gallons per second. Hundreds of companies were also dumping industrial waste into the lake.
Comparing Capitalism to Socialism in Mexico
Now, let’s do a comparison between an environmental disaster caused by British Petroleum (BP) and one caused by Pemex, Mexico’s nationalized, government-owned oil company that represents socialism. Let’s compare the two oil firms.
In April of 2010, an oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by British Petroleum (BP). When this environmental disaster happened, BP almost immediately established a trust fund of $20 million to help clean up the environmental mess caused by their company, and to pay for damages. Because it caused the disaster, it had legal obligations to clean up its own mess, and because it was a private entity, separate from, and not owned by, the government, it was much easier to bring legal recourse against the company. Besides, it had to look out for its own reputation as a corporation, both to its stockholders, and to its customers, so there was a very strong incentive for them to take care of the situation as quickly as they possibly could, and they did just that.
Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos), the nationalized, Mexican-government-owned oil company, shows how a socialized business entity handles the same kind of environmental disasters.
In 2015, Pemex was responsible for three catastrophic environmental tragedies. Several deaths occurred, many workers suffered from injuries, and there was massive air and water pollution caused by these explosions. In one of those instances, satellite imagery showed an oil slick 2 1/2 miles long. When the Mexican media tried to make people aware of the events of those environmental disasters, the Mexican government tried to silence and censor those media reports. When Pemex was asked about the oil rig explosions, they denied that they had caused any oil spills. If you were in some way victimized by the explosions, or by the oil spills caused by those explosions, you would have found it extremely difficult to get any legal recourse or justice. Why? Because Pemex was owned by the very government that you needed to go to in order to get that legal recourse. Pemex, at the behest of the government that owned them, declared “sovereign immunity” from any legal damages that were brought upon it by victims.
If this case is a good example of what happens with government ownership, representing a form of socialism here, it means that socialism, when it comes to fixing environmental disasters, is bad for the environment, and simultaneously makes it difficult to bring justice to the victims of these disasters. When we compare this type of business setup – government ownership – to private ownership – representing capitalism – it shows that private ownership works much better to fix those environmental problems and to bring justice to the victims of those disasters.
Conclusion
So, what have we learned today? Socialism in Eastern Europe was very bad for the environment in the twentieth century. Venezuela and China today continue that legacy of socialism. A comparison between a nationalized business, representing socialism, and a privately-owned business, representing capitalism, makes it very clear that socialism is bad for the environment when calamity strikes.
